[REVIEW] Huawei P8, Beautiful Crafted Smartphone But Doesn’t Live Up As Flagship

Huawei announced its 2015 flagship smartphone, Huawei P8 three month back ago in China and it has reached to Malaysia’s shore last month.

Here’s a quick unboxing of the Huawei P8 and what is in the box.

Summaries specification of the new Huawei P8

Huawei Kirin 930, Octa-core SoC

3GB of RAM

5.2-inch Full HD display

16GB of on-board storage with microSD card slot

Dual 4G LTE (both nano SIM)

13 megapixel f/2.0 with OIS, RGBW sensor

8 megapixel front camera

2,680 mAh battery

Has been using the Huawei P8 for a week now and below are my feedbacks of the device.

Premium Unibody Design

Huawei is one the smartphone manufacturer that builds very solid and premium-ish design smartphone after HTC. The phone is very slim at only 6.4mm, slimmer than iPhone 6 as well the Galaxy S6 edge.

Display

The 5.2-inch IPS-Neo technology display supposed to deliver brighter, vivid and sharper display but my finding was a little be back off with the claims. The display seem a little be over saturated and have yellow-tint display. Not sure because of review unit and expecting new software update.

Speaker is loud

The speaker is quite loud and clear even on maximum volume.

A little downside on the speaker position, the P8 shape is quite square and flat on the bottom. My palm tends to cover the speaker when I use the phone in landscape mode.

Average Speed Performance

Huawei’s own breed 64-bits octa-core Kirin 930 processor wasn’t that powerful for a flagship as it only able to score less than 47,000 points on AnTuTu benchmark. Even the last year 32-bits Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 beat that score with same 3GB of RAM.

Camera

The rear 13 megapixel RGBW sensor with OIS is very good, light sensitive, great noise control and has manual control on the exposure, shutter speed and ISO. But still it unable able to beat Samsung Galaxy S6’s ISOCELL sensor that has f/1.9, quick camera launch and fast focus.

It camera main feature highlight is the “Light Painting” function that can shoot long exposure photos like; Taillight Trails, Light Graffiti, Silky Water & Star Track.

On the front has an 8 megapixel camera that able to take high resolution selfie image but unfortunately it’s doesn’t have wide angle lens.

Battery

The non-removable 2,680mAh battery able to keep the phone on for about 15 hours on normal usage before it died off, which is quite decent for it slim design profile smartphone.

Android 5.0, EMUI 3.1

P8 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop, suit up with Huawei’s EMUI 3.1. It so Huawei UI that amiss the Android 5.0 UX. The single platform that doesn’t have app tray having all the app icons lay down on the home screens although you can create folders to group the app together.

It has some unique features propriety features like TouchPlus and Signal+.

TouchPlus allows you to have full 5.2-inch full display by relocate the back, home and menu button to the bottom of the screen and customisable invisible button on top of the screen. This will required a special screen protector.

Signal+ improve network signal enable phone to receive signals from all directions in order to optimize the internet experience and call quality. This would reduce the network disconnection and call drop rates.

Conclusion

No doubt this Huawei P8 is a beautiful crafted premium smartphone but it doesn’t live up as flagship smartphone.Fingerprint sensor are also missing as the upcoming Android M has a native fingerprint support. The performance is below expectation for a 2015 flagship. The UX is not that straight forward as what Android 5.X UI should be.

Huawei P8 are available for RM 1,799 at it’s available at all Huawei authorised reseller stores.